Charlemagnealso called Charles I, byname Charles the Great, French Charles le Grand, Latin Carolus Magnus, German Karl der Grosse ( born April 2, c. 742—died Jan. 747—died January 28, 814 , Aachen, Austrasia [now in Germany] ) king of the Franks (768–814), king of the Lombards (774–814), and emperor (800–814).

As king of the Franks, Charlemagne conquered the Lombard kingdom in Italy, subdued the Saxons, annexed Bavaria to his kingdom, fought campaigns in Spain and Hungary, and, with the exception of the Kingdom of Asturias in Spain, southern Italy, and the British Isles, united in one superstate practically all the Christian lands of western Europe. In 800 he assumed the title of emperor. (He is reckoned as Charles I of the Holy Roman Empire, as well as Charles I of France.) Besides expanding its political power, he also brought about a cultural renaissance in his empire. Although this imperium survived its founder by only one generation, the medieval kingdoms of France and Germany derived all their constitutional traditions from Charles’s monarchy. Throughout medieval Europe, the person of Charles was considered the prototype of a Christian king and emperor.

Early years

Charles was born probably in 742, the elder son of Pippin III, also called Pippin the Short. Pippin and his older brother, Carloman, had just jointly assumed the government of the Frankish kingdom as major domus, or “mayor of the palace.” The dynasty, later called Carolingian after Charlemagne, had originated in the Meuse-Moselle region on the borders of modern France, Germany, Belgium, and The Netherlands. In the course of a few generations, it had, as mayors of the palace to the Merovingians, gained control of the entire Frankish kingdom. Charlemagne’s grandfather, Charles Martel, reconstituted a realm that had been on the point of breaking up, and, without infringing on the royal prerogatives of the otherwise powerless Merovingians, he had in effect bequeathed the empire to his sons, Pippin and Carloman, like a family inheritance.

Charles grew to manhood while his father was engaged in acquiring sole sovereignty and the kingship. On Carloman’s retirement to a monastery, Pippin eliminated the latter’s sons from the government. Having thus prepared the way, he had himself proclaimed king in 751, after dethroning the Merovingians. An oracular response by Pope Zacharias furnished the ecclesiastical approbation for thus shunting aside the former reigning house, which had been held sacred. Zacharias’s successor, Stephen II, arrived in the Frankish kingdom during the winter of 753–754, in order to seek help against the Lombards who were attacking Rome. As the reigning monarch’s oldest son, Charles, then about 12 years of age, traveled ahead to welcome the pope, who anointed him king, along with his father and his brother Carloman, thus sanctioning the new dynasty. The political alliance between the Franks and the pope against the Lombards was affirmed on the same occasion. When his father subdued Aquitaine (France south of the Loire) in a series of yearly campaigns beginning in 760, reasserting the integrity of the Frankish kingdom all the way to the Pyrenees, Charles repeatedly accompanied the army.

These youthful experiences probably contributed to the formation of Charles’s character and to the formulation of his aims. He shared with his father an unbending will to power, a readiness to fight resolutely against external enemies and to increase his domains, and the determination to rule by himself even if it meant usurping the rights of close relatives. Charles early acknowledged the close connection between temporal power and the church; he had a high regard for the church and the king’s duty to spread the Christian faith and, while asserting royal suzerainty over the church, considered himself accountable to God for the Christians entrusted to him.

King of the Franks

In accordance with old Frankish custom, the kingdom was divided on Pippin’s death in 768 between his two sons. It was not long, however, before a strong rivalry sprang up between the brothers: with his mother’s support, Charles concluded, with the Lombard king Desiderius, whose daughter he married, and with his cousin Duke Tassilo of Bavaria, alliances directed against Carloman.

On Carloman’s sudden death in 771, Charles was able to make himself sole ruler of the kingdom, unopposed by his young nephews, whose rights he ignored. When Carloman’s widow with her children and a few remaining supporters had fled to the Lombard court, and King Desiderius, breaking his alliance with Charles, put pressure on the pope to anoint Carloman’s sons as Frankish kings, Charles was forced to come to the aid of Pope Adrian I. He marched on the Lombard capital, Pavia, and after its fall made himself king of the Lombards. His brother’s sons, who had fallen into his hands, disappeared. While the siege of Pavia was still in progress, Charles journeyed to Rome, where he celebrated Easter 774 with the pope and reiterated, in St. Peter’s Basilica, his father’s promise to transfer to papal rule large sections of Italy. But he actually enlarged the pope’s lands only slightly, assuming for himself the sovereignty over the entire Lombard kingdom.

Charles had fought the pagan Saxons, in what is now Lower Saxony and Westphalia, in retribution for their attacks on the lower Rhine region, as early as 772, before the first Italian campaign. From 775 on, however, it was his goal to subdue the whole Saxon tribe, converting it to Christianity and integrating it into his kingdom. This aim appeared to have been realized after several campaigns culminating in declarations of allegiance by the Saxon nobility and mass baptisms performed in 775–777. A diet held in 777 in Paderborn sealed the submission of the Saxons. Among those attending the diet had been some Arab emissaries from northern Spain who sought Charles’s aid in their uprising against the Umayyad emir of Córdoba. In the summer of 778 Charles advanced into Spain and laid siege to Saragossa, without, however, being able to take the city. Retreating across the Pyrenees, the Frankish army was badly mauled by the Basques. Roland, warden of the Breton march, who died on this occasion, was later immortalized in legend and poetry.

This defeat marks the end of the first period of Charles’s rule, the period of vigorous expansion. Within a decade he had become the sole ruler of the Franks, conquered the Lombard kingdom, visited Rome, subdued the Saxons, and invaded Spain. Henceforth he was concerned with defending and safeguarding his quickly won gains (which were to be extended only on the right bank of the Rhine), while consolidating the state internally and protecting cultural life and the rule of law.

Not long after Charles’s defeat in Spain, the Saxons rose up once more. The war against them became the longest and most cruel war fought by the Franks. In Charles’s eyes, the resistance of this people that had undergone baptism and signed a treaty of allegiance amounted to political high treason and religious apostasy. These offenses called for severe punishment, and 4,500 Saxons were reported to have been executed en masse in 782. New outbreaks occurred after 792, and the last Saxons were not vanquished until 804. Between 772 and 804, Charles took the field against the Saxons no fewer than 18 times. In the end he carried out his aim of not only subjecting them to his rule but also incorporating them fully into his empire. Given the indissoluble tie between temporal power and the Christian faith, this meant they had to be converted. But the violent methods by which this missionary task was carried out had been unknown to the earlier Middle Ages, and the sanguinary punishment meted out to those who broke canon law or continued to engage in pagan practices called forth criticism in Charles’s own circle—for example, by Alcuin, his adviser and head of his palace school.

When, in 788, Charles deposed his cousin Duke Tassilo III of Bavaria, who had acknowledged the Frankish kings as feudal lords, he in effect deprived of its independence the last of the German tribes beyond the Rhine. The Bavarians, who had long been Christians, were now directly integrated into the empire. The West Germanic tribes of the Alemanni, Bavarians, Saxons, and Thuringians thus found themselves for the first time gathered into one political unit. Charles’s conquests on the right bank of the Rhine were, however, not limited to the Germanic tribes. Making Ratisbon (Regensburg), the residence of the Bavarian dukes, his base, he conducted several campaigns, partly under his own command, against the Avar kingdom (in modern Hungary and Upper Austria). The remaining Avar principalities and the newly founded Slav states of the Danubian region drifted into a loose dependence on the Franks, whose sovereignty they more or less acknowledged.

The gigantic expansion of the Frankish state, raising it far above the tribal states of the early Middle Ages, entailed qualitative as well as quantitative changes. Yet the idea of bestowing on Charles the Roman title of emperor arose only at a very late stage and out of a specific political constellation. While the Eastern, or Byzantine, Empire laid claim to universal recognition, the popes, constitutionally still subjects of Byzantium, were opposed to the iconoclastic religious policies of the Eastern emperors. Moreover, under the protection of Charles, Pope Adrian sought to erect an autonomous domain over central Italy, the more so as the Byzantines, abandoning for all practical purposes Rome and Ravenna, were asserting their rule only in Sicily and the southernmost edge of Italy. The papacy’s desire for independence found a significant expression in the Donation of Constantine, a forgery dating probably from the first few years of Adrian’s reign and purporting to legitimize these papal aims in the name of the first Christian emperor, Constantine I the Great. Charles paid a second visit to Rome in 781, when he had the pope crown his young sons Pippin and Louis as kings of the Lombards and Aquitanians and gained de facto recognition of his Italian position from the Byzantine empress Irene, the mother of Constantine VI. The entente that existed between Charles and Byzantium came to an end after a Frankish attack on southern Italy in 787.

Emperor of the West

In the end, local Roman conflicts brought about the clarification of the city’s constitutional position. In May 799, Pope Leo III was waylaid in Rome by personal enemies. He took refuge at the court of Charles, who had him conducted back to the city and who in November 800 came to Rome himself, where he was received with imperial honours. Before Charles and a synod, Pope Leo cleared himself under oath of the charges made by his enemies. During Christmas mass in St. Peter’s, the Romans acclaimed Charles emperor, whereupon the pope crowned and perhaps anointed him.

The imperial title was by nature a Roman dignity. While the acclamation represented the juridically conclusive act, it was the coronation at the hands of the pope that, though of no constitutional importance, was to acquire for the Franks great significance. The pope had been determined to make Charles emperor, deciding to a large extent the outward form; yet Charles was surely not surprised by these events. His famous statement quoted by one of his favourites, the Frankish historian Einhard, that he would not have set foot in church that Christmas if he had known the pope’s intention, implies a criticism of the ceremony initiated by the pope, as well as a formal expression of humility. The crowning had been preceded by negotiations. While Charles’s imperial rank was legally substantiated by the fact of his dominion over the western part of the old Roman Empire, the desire to counteract the petticoat rule of the empress Irene (who had dethroned and blinded her son in 797) also played a role. Residing in Rome four months and pronouncing sentence on the pope’s enemies as rebels guilty of lese majesty, Charles grasped the imperial reins with a firm hand. Likewise, after his return to Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle), he promulgated laws in full consciousness of his rank as emperor.

Byzantium braced itself for the usurper’s attack, but Charles merely wished to see his new rank and his dominion over Rome recognized in negotiations; he gained his point in 812 when the emperor Michael I acknowledged him as emperor, though not as emperor of the Romans. While the imperial title did not bring Charles any additional powers, his control of Rome was now legitimized, and the estrangement of the papacy from Byzantium and its rapprochement with the Franks, a major historical event that had been initiated in 754, was rendered incontrovertible. A significant result of this development was the tradition to which Charles’s assumption of the imperial title and function gave rise: all medieval concepts of empire and all the bonds between the constitutional traditions of the Franks and the later Holy Roman Empire with the Roman Empire founded by Augustus were based on the precedent of Charles’s imperial title and position.

Court and administration

The creation of the empire was chiefly legitimized by Charles’s efforts to raise its cultural level internally. When Charles came to power, the Frankish kingdom’s cultural, administrative, and legal institutions were still relatively undeveloped. The Frankish king, for example, possessed no permanent residence. In the summer months he traveled about, deciding political issues and dispensing justice in assemblies of spiritual and temporal lords; above all, summer was the season for military campaigns. During the winter, from Christmas to Easter and sometimes longer, the king lived and held court at one of the imperial palaces. Charles especially favoured those situated in the Frankish heartland: only rarely did he spend the winter in one of the newly won territories, in encampment in Saxony, in Ratisbon, or in Rome. Not until 794 did Aachen, which the aging monarch liked because of its warm springs, become the court’s abode, indeed almost a residence, during every winter and often even in summer. Here Charles built, partially with materials imported from Rome and Ravenna, the court church that is still standing, as well as the palace whose walls were incorporated into the 14th-century city hall.

Charles’s court consisted of his family, of the clergy in his personal service, who were called the king’s capella, and of temporal officials, among them the count palatine, the seneschal, and the master of the royal household. These men were occasionally joined, on an informal basis, by other spiritual or temporal men of rank who spent some time in the ruler’s presence. For Charles had the ambition to make his court the intellectual, as well as the political and administrative, centre of the realm and accordingly summoned prominent scholars from all parts of the empire and even from abroad. Among these the most important were Einhard and Alcuin.

With the help of these and other literary men, Charles established a court library containing the works of the Church Fathers and those of ancient authors, and he founded a court academy for the education of young Frankish knights. Last but not least, he himself took part with his family and the learned and lay members of his entourage in a cultivated social life that afforded him entertainment no less than instruction. His mother tongue was an Old High German idiom, besides which he presumably understood the Old French dialect spoken by many Franks; as a grown man, he also learned Latin and some Greek, had historical and theological writings, including St. Augustine’s City of God, read aloud to him, and acquired a rudimentary knowledge of mathematics and astronomy.

The court’s cultural interests, however, extended beyond the intellectual gratification of a small circle, such as the exchange of verses and letters. Efforts were also made to raise the level of religious observance, morality, and the process of justice throughout the empire. The clearest and most famous instance of this was the Epistula de litteris colendis, dating presumably from 784 to 785 and compiled in Charles’s name by Alcuin. Its main argument lies in the assertion that the right faith—indeed, every right thought—must be clothed in the appropriate form and language, lest it be falsified; hence, the prescription of intensive study of Latin language and literature for all monastic and cathedral schools. The spiritual and literary movement called the “Carolingian renaissance” had many centres, especially in the empire’s monasteries; but it cannot be evaluated without reference to Charles’s court and to his endeavour to call on the best minds of the whole world, setting them to work in the education of the clergy and, in the final instance, of the whole people. The court’s theological knowledge and intellectual self-confidence are reflected in the Libri Carolini, a comprehensive treatise written about 791 in Charles’s name and directed against the Council of Nicaea (787), at which Greeks and papal plenipotentiaries had countenanced the practice of iconolatry; at the same time, the Libri Carolini did not spare the iconoclasts.

Through this court, Charles ruled and administered his empire and dispensed justice. Once or twice a year at least, the court and the chief magistrates and nobles from all parts of the empire joined in a general assembly held either in the Frankish heartland or in one of the conquered territories. It is indicative of the unique structure of the Carolingian Empire that one cannot draw clear distinctions between an assembly of the armed forces, a constitutional assembly of the nobility, and a church synod: juridical, military, and ecclesiastical affairs were invariably discussed at one and the same time by the representatives of the nobility and the clergy. Above them all towered the figure of Charlemagne.

On the local level the ruler was represented in every region by counts and bishops. Liaison between these personages and the court was maintained through royal messengers who travelled about at Charles’s command, usually in pairs made up of a civil servant and a clerical dignitary. Royal commands did not have to be written out, although Charles’s decrees (capitularies) increasingly came to be recorded in writing, at first rather imprecisely, in the last two decades of his reign; the forms coined by the “renaissance” gained ground only with time. Charles respected the traditional rights of the various peoples and tribes under his dominion as a matter of principle, and, after he became emperor, he had many of them recorded. The capitularies served partly as complements to tribal laws, partly as regulations applying to the most disparate aspects of public and private life, and in part also as specific instructions issued to royal messengers, counts, bishops, and others. Punitive decrees against highwaymen, dispositions concerning military levies, and orders for the people to take an oath of allegiance to the emperor or to teach all Christians to recite the Lord’s Prayer are found intermingled in the capitularies with jurisdictional dispositions and regulations about the internal organization of monasteries; temporal and spiritual problems are rarely treated separately. Taken as a whole, the legal documents of Charles’s reign bear witness to a great concern, born of profound moral and religious convictions, with the administration of justice and with public enlightenment, but they also show discrepancies between the ideal and reality.

Limitations of his rule

Charles’s organization of the empire was, however, not without its defects and limitations. The sovereign’s power was restricted only by theoretical principles of law and custom, not by institutions or countervailing forces. Significantly, the records report little about opposition movements and conspiracies, which, in fact, did exist. A rebellion that Thuringian counts launched against Charles in 786 can perhaps be explained as ethnic opposition to the centralism of the Franks. More ominous was an aristocratic conspiracy that in 792 attempted to place on the throne the hunchback Pippin, Charles’s only son from his first marriage, which was later declared invalid; yet here, too, the political concepts and motives remain unknown. These events and, more clearly still, the history of the empire under Charles’s successor, Louis, show the extent to which the political system had been designed for one person on whose outstanding abilities everything depended and with whose disappearance it threatened to collapse. Their self-confidence enhanced by Charles’s educational policy, the clergy could not accept for all time his theocracy without opposing it with their own political and religious principles. The temporal nobility that had built the empire with the Carolingians could be firmly tied to the dynasty only as long as new conquests held out the prospect of new spoils and fiefs; if these failed to materialize, there remained only the care of one’s properties in the different regions and the hope of gaining advantages from party strife. External expansion, however, could not advance substantially beyond the borders reached by 800; in fact, economic and technical resources were insufficient to hold together and administer what had already been won and to defend it against foreign enemies. Charles’s empire lacked the means by which the Romans had preserved theirs: a money economy, a paid civil service, a standing army, a properly maintained network of roads and communications, a navy for coastal defense. Already in Charles’s lifetime, the coasts were being threatened by the Normans. In 806 Charles planned a division of the empire between his sons, but after the death of the elder two he crowned Louis of Aquitaine his coemperor and sole successor at Aachen in 813. It was only a few months later that Charles himself died there in 814.

Personality and influence

Charlemagne’s posthumous fame shone the more brightly as the following generations were unable to preserve the empire’s internal peace, its unity, and its international position. Even after the Carolingian dynasty had become extinct, political tradition in the East Frankish (German) kingdom and empire, as well as in the West Frankish (French) kingdom, drew sustenance from the example set by Charlemagne. Under Otto I, Aachen became the city in which the rulers of Germany were crowned, and, at Frederick I Barbarossa’s request, the antipope Paschal III canonized Charlemagne in 1165. In France the Capetians, beginning with Philip II Augustus, revived the traditions that had grown up around Charlemagne. The controversial question whether the Germans or the French were the true successors of Charlemagne was kept alive through the Middle Ages and into modern times. Napoleon called himself Charlemagne’s successor; after the end of World War II, discussions of a united, Christian, “occidental” Europe invoked his model. Hand in hand with these political traditions went those in popular legend and poetry, culminating in the Roland epics. Nor did Charlemagne’s fame stop at the boundaries of what was once his empire; some Slavic languages derived their term for “king” from his name (e.g., Czech: král; Polish: król).

Charles left no biographical document; his personality can be constructed only from his deeds and the reports left by contemporaries. This is how Einhard, who lived at the court from about 795 on, described Charlemagne’s character and appearance in his famous Vita Karoli Magni:

He had a broad and strong body of unusual height, but well-proportioned; for his height measured seven times his feet. His skull was round, the eyes were lively and rather large, the nose of more than average length, the hair gray but full, the face friendly and cheerful. Seated or standing, he thus made a dignified and stately impression even though he had a thick, short neck and a belly that protruded somewhat; but this was hidden by the good proportions of the rest of his figure. He strode with firm step and held himself like a man; he spoke with a higher voice than one would have expected of someone of his build. He enjoyed good health except for being repeatedly plagued by fevers four years before his death. Toward the end he dragged one foot.

The strength of Charlemagne’s personality was evidently rooted in the unbroken conviction of being at one with the divine will. Without inward contradiction, he was able to combine personal piety with enjoyment of life, a religious sense of mission with a strong will to power, rough manners with a striving for intellectual growth, and intransigence against his enemies with rectitude. In his politically conditioned religiosity, the empire and the church grew into an institutional and spiritual unit. Although his empire survived him by only one generation, it contributed decisively to the eventual reconstitution, in the mind of a western Europe fragmented since the end of the Roman Empire, of a common intellectual, religious, and political inheritance on which later centuries could draw. Charlemagne did not create this inheritance single-handedly, but one would be hard put to imagine it without him. One of the poets at his court called him rex pater Europae—“King father of Europe.” In truth, there is no other man who similarly left his mark on European history during the centuries of the Middle Ages.

Einhard, Vita Karoli Magni Imperatoris: The Life of Charlemagne, trans. from Latin by Evelyn Scherabon Firchow and Edwin H. Zeydel (1972, reissued 1985), is the famous biography by one of Charlemagne’s closest collaborators—a character analysis rather than an account of events. Donald A. Bullough, The Age of Charlemagne, 2nd ed. (1973, reissued 1980), is a modern presentation for the general reader by a good specialist. D.

Early years

At the time of his birth, probably in April 747, his father, Pippin III the Short, was mayor of the palace, an official serving the Merovingian king but actually wielding effective power over the extensive Frankish kingdom. What little is known about Charlemagne’s youth suggests that he received practical training for leadership by participating in the political, social, and military activities associated with his father’s court. His early years were marked by a succession of events that had immense implications for the Frankish position in the contemporary world. In 751, with papal approval, Pippin seized the Frankish throne from the last Merovingian king, Childeric III. After meeting with Pope Stephen II at the royal palace of Ponthion in 753–754, Pippin forged an alliance with the pope by committing himself to protect Rome in return for papal sanction of the right of Pippin’s dynasty to the Frankish throne. Pippin also intervened militarily in Italy in 755 and 756 to restrain Lombard threats to Rome, and in the so-called Donation of Pippin in 756 he bestowed on the papacy a block of territory stretching across central Italy which formed the basis of a new political entity, the Papal States, over which the pope ruled.

When Pippin died in 768, his realm was divided according to Frankish custom between Charlemagne and his brother, Carloman. Almost immediately the rivalry between the two brothers threatened the unity of the Frankish kingdom. Seeking advantage over his brother, Charlemagne formed an alliance with Desiderius, king of the Lombards, accepting as his wife the daughter of the king to seal an agreement that threatened the delicate equilibrium that had been established in Italy by Pippin’s alliance with the papacy. The death of Carloman in 771 ended the mounting crisis, and Charlemagne, disregarding the rights of Carloman’s heirs, took control of the entire Frankish realm.

King of the Franks

The age of Charlemagne

Charlemagne assumed rulership at a moment when powerful forces of change were affecting his kingdom. By Frankish tradition he was a warrior king, expected to lead his followers in wars that would expand Frankish hegemony and produce rewards for his companions. His Merovingian predecessors had succeeded remarkably well as conquerors, but their victories resulted in a kingdom made up of diverse peoples over which unified rule grew increasingly difficult. Complicating the situation for the Merovingian kings were both the insatiable appetite of the Frankish aristocracy for wealth and power and the constant partitioning of the Frankish realm that resulted from the custom of treating the kingdom as a patrimony to be divided among all the male heirs surviving each king. By the early 8th century these forces had reduced the Merovingian rulers to what their Carolingian successors dubbed “do nothing” kings. Real power had been assumed by an aristocratic dynasty, later called the Carolingians after Charlemagne, which during the 7th century clawed its way to dominance by utilizing the office of mayor of the palace to establish control over the royal administration and royal resources and to build a following strong enough to fend off rival Frankish families seeking comparable power. During the 8th century the Carolingian mayors of the palace Charles Martel (714–741) and (prior to becoming king) Pippin III (741–751) increasingly turned their attention to activities aimed at checking the political fragmentation of the Frankish kingdom. Charlemagne was thus heir to a long tradition that measured a king by his success at war, which in turn required him to devise means of governance capable of sustaining control over an increasingly polyglot population.

New forces were at work in the mid-8th century to complicate the traditional role of Frankish kingship. As a result of Pippin’s reliance on the ecclesiastical authority to legitimate his deposition of the Merovingian dynasty and his usurpation of the royal office, the Carolingians had become, in the idiom of the time, rulers “by the grace of God,” a role that imposed on them new, not yet clearly defined powers and responsibilities. The assumption of that new burden came at a time when religious renewal was gathering momentum to add a new dimension to the forces defining, directing, and sustaining the Christian community. The 8th century witnessed intellectual and artistic stirrings throughout Latin Christendom which focused on reestablishing contact with the Classical and patristic past as a crucial requirement for the renewal of Christian society. The Frankish social system, which had been based on kinship ties, on bonds linking war leaders and their comrades in arms, and on ethnicity, was being overlaid by social bonds created when one individual commended himself to another, thereby accepting a condition of personal dependence that entailed the rendering of services to the superior in return for material considerations granted to the dependent party. Moreover, the world beyond Francia was being reshaped politically and economically by the decline of the Eastern Roman Empire, the triumphal advance of Arab forces and their Islamic religion across the Mediterranean world, and the threat posed by new invaders from Scandinavia, the Slavic world, and central Asia.

The distinguishing mark of Charlemagne’s reign was his effort to honour the age-old customs and expectations of Frankish kingship while responding creatively to the new forces impinging on society. His personal qualities served him well in confronting that challenge. The ideal warrior chief, Charlemagne was an imposing physical presence blessed with extraordinary energy, personal courage, and an iron will. He loved the active life—military campaigning, hunting, swimming—but he was no less at home at court, generous with his gifts, a boon companion at the banquet table, and adept at establishing friendships. Never far from his mind was his large family: five wives in sequence, several concubines, and at least 18 children over whose interests he watched carefully. Although he received only an elementary level of formal education, Charlemagne possessed considerable native intelligence, intellectual curiosity, a willingness to learn from others, and religious sensibility—all attributes which allowed him to comprehend the forces that were reshaping the world about him. These facets of his persona combined to make him a figure worthy of respect, loyalty, and affection; he was a leader capable of making informed decisions, willing to act on those decisions, and skilled at persuading others to follow him.

Military campaigns

The first three decades of Charlemagne’s reign were dominated by military campaigns, which were prompted by a variety of factors: the need to defend his realm against external foes and internal separatists, a desire for conquest and booty, a keen sense of opportunities offered by changing power relationships, and an urge to spread Christianity. His performance on the battlefield earned him fame as a warrior king in the Frankish tradition, one who would make the Franks a force in the world once contained in the Roman Empire.

Charlemagne’s most demanding military undertaking pitted him against the Saxons, longtime adversaries of the Franks whose conquest required more than 30 years of campaigning (772 to 804). This long struggle, which led to the annexation of a large block of territory between the Rhine and the Elbe rivers, was marked by pillaging, broken truces, hostage taking, mass killings, deportation of rebellious Saxons, draconian measures to compel acceptance of Christianity, and occasional Frankish defeats. The Frisians, Saxon allies living along the North Sea east of the Rhine, were also forced into submission.

While the conquest of Saxony was in progress, Charlemagne undertook other campaigns. As soon as he became sole king in 771, he repudiated his Lombard wife and his alliance with her father, King Desiderius. Soon after, in 773–774, he answered the appeals of Pope Adrian I (772–795) for protection by leading a victorious expedition into Italy, which ended with his assumption of the Lombard crown and the annexation of northern Italy. During this campaign Charlemagne went to Rome to reaffirm the Frankish protectorate over the papacy and to confirm papal rights to the territories conceded by Charlemagne’s father. Additional campaigns were required to incorporate the Lombard kingdom fully into the Frankish realm, however; an important step in that process came in 781, when Charlemagne created a subkingdom of Italy with his son Pippin as king.

Concerned with defending southern Gaul from Muslim attacks and beguiled by promises of help from local Muslim leaders in northern Spain who sought to escape the authority of the Umayyad ruler of Cordoba, Charlemagne invaded Spain in 778. That ill-considered venture ended in a disastrous defeat of the retreating Frankish army by Gascon (Basque) forces, immortalized three centuries later in the epic poem The Song of Roland. Despite this setback, Charlemagne persisted in his effort to make the frontier in Spain more secure. In 781 he created a subkingdom of Aquitaine with his son Louis as king. From that base Frankish forces mounted a series of campaigns that eventually established Frankish control over the Spanish March, the territory lying between the Pyrenees and the Ebro River.

In 787–788 Charlemagne forcibly annexed Bavaria, whose leaders had long resisted Frankish overlordship. That victory brought the Franks face to face with the Avars, Asiatic nomads who during the late 6th and 7th centuries had formed an extensive empire largely inhabited by conquered Slavs living on both sides of the Danube. By the 8th century Avar power was in decline, and successful Frankish campaigns in 791, 795, and 796 hastened the disintegration of that empire. Charlemagne captured a huge store of booty, claimed a block of territory south of the Danube in Carinthia and Pannonia, and opened a missionary field that led to the conversion of the Avars and their former Slavic subjects to Christianity.

Charlemagne’s military successes resulted in an ever-lengthening frontier, which needed to be defended. Through a combination of military force and diplomacy he established relatively stable relations with a variety of potentially dangerous enemies, including the Danish kingdom, several Slavic tribes inhabiting the territory along the eastern frontier stretching from the Baltic Sea to the Balkans, the Lombard duchy of Benevento in southern Italy, the Muslims in Spain, and the Gascons and the Bretons in Gaul. The Italian scene was complicated by the Papal States, whose boundaries remained problematic and whose leader, the pope, had no clearly defined political status relative to his Frankish protector, now his neighbour as king of the Lombards. In general, Charlemagne’s relations with the papacy, especially with Pope Adrian I, were positive and brought him valuable support for his religious program and praise for his qualities as a Christian leader. The expanded Frankish presence in Italy and the Balkans intensified diplomatic encounters with the Eastern emperors, which strengthened the Frankish position with respect to the Eastern Roman Empire, weakened by internal dissension and threatened by Muslim and Bulgar pressure on its eastern and northern frontiers. Charlemagne also established friendly relations with the ʿAbbāsid caliph in Baghdad (Hārūn al-Rashīd), the Anglo-Saxon kings of Mercia and Northumbria, and the ruler of the Christian kingdom of Asturias in northwestern Spain. And he enjoyed a vague role as protector of the Christian establishment in Jerusalem. By boldly and resourcefully combining the traditional role of warrior king with aggressive diplomacy based on a good grasp of current political realities, Charlemagne elevated the Frankish kingdom to a position of leadership in the European world.

Court and administration

While responding to the challenges involved in enacting his role as warrior king, Charlemagne was mindful of the obligation of a Frankish ruler to maintain the unity of his realm. This burden was complicated by the ethnic, linguistic, and legal divisions between the populations brought under Frankish domination in the course of three centuries of conquest, beginning with the reign of the first Merovingian king, Clovis (481–511). As a political leader, Charlemagne was not an innovator. His concern was to make more effective the political institutions and administrative techniques inherited from his Merovingian predecessors. The central directive force of the kingdom remained the king himself, whose office by tradition empowered its holder with the right to command the obedience of his subjects and to punish those who did not obey. For assistance in asserting his power to command, Charlemagne relied on his palatium, a shifting assemblage of family members, trusted lay and ecclesiastical companions, and assorted hangers-on, which constituted an itinerant court following the king as he carried out his military campaigns and sought to take advantage of the income from widely scattered royal estates. Members of this circle, some with titles suggesting primitive administrative departments, performed on royal orders various functions related to managing royal resources, conducting military campaigns and diplomatic missions, producing written documents required to administer the realm, undertaking missions across the kingdom to enforce royal policies, rendering justice, conducting religious services, and counseling the king.

A critical component of the king’s effectiveness and a matter of constant concern for Charlemagne was the army, in which all freemen were obligated to serve at their own expense when summoned by the king. Increasingly important in maintaining the military establishment, especially its armoured cavalry, was the king’s ability to provide sources of income, usually land grants, that enabled his subjects to serve at their own expense. The resources required to sustain the central government were derived from war booty, income from royal estates, judicial fines and fees, tolls on trade, obligatory gifts from noble subjects, and, to a very limited degree, direct taxes.

To exercise his authority locally, Charlemagne continued to rely on royal officials known as counts, who represented royal authority in territorial entities called counties (pagi). Their functions included administering justice, raising troops, collecting taxes, and keeping peace. Bishops also continued to play an important role in local government. Charlemagne expanded clerical involvement in government by increasing the use of royal grants of immunity to bishops and abbots, which freed their properties from intervention by public authorities. This privilege, in effect, allowed its recipients or their agents to rule over those inhabiting their property as long as they enjoyed royal favour. The effectiveness of this governance system depended largely on the abilities and the loyalty of those who filled offices at the local level. Charlemagne recruited most royal officials from a limited number of interrelated aristocratic families who were eager to serve the king in return for the prestige, power, and material rewards associated with royal service.

Charlemagne’s most innovative political measures involved strengthening the linkages between his person, his palatium, and local officials. He made full use of the traditional Frankish annual assembly, the mustering of those called to military service in a context which highlighted the common bond entailed in their willingness to follow their leader into war. Charlemagne expanded the function of these meetings to make them an instrument for cementing the king’s personal ties with counts, bishops, abbots, and powerful magnates. At these assemblies, he heard their complaints, accepted their advice, gained their assent for his policies, and delivered to them in his own words his commands for ruling his realm. The network of families from which the king selected most of his officials provided important channels through which pressure could be applied to assure that royal commands were executed locally. In addition, Charlemagne required all his free subjects to swear under oath to obey the king and to conduct themselves in ways that contributed to peace and concord. Especially important in strengthening the king’s hand politically was Charlemagne’s practice of establishing personal ties with powerful figures by accepting them as royal vassals in return for benefices in the form of offices and land grants to be exploited for their personal benefit as long as they remained loyal.

Charlemagne integrated the central and the local administration by regularizing and expanding the use of missi dominici, royal agents charged with making regular circuits through specifically defined territorial entities to announce the king’s will, to gather information on the performance of local officials, and to correct abuses. The greatly expanded use of written documents as a means of communication between the central and the local governments allowed for greater precision and uniformity in transmitting royal orders and in gathering information about their execution. Among these documents were the royal capitularies, quasi-legislative documents dispatched across the kingdom to set forth the king’s will and to provide instructions for enacting his orders.

The record of Charlemagne’s reign indicates his awareness of new developments affecting economic and social conditions. Although scholars are divided on the import of his actions, the evidence suggests that he was concerned with improving the organization and techniques of agricultural production, establishing a monetary system better attuned to actual exchange operations, standardizing weights and measures, expanding trading ventures into areas around the North Sea and Baltic Sea, and protecting merchants from excessive tolls and robbery. Royal legislation sought to protect the weak against exploitation and injustice. The king helped to clarify the incipient lord-vassal system and utilized that form of social contract to promote order and stability. Although his economic and social initiatives were motivated chiefly by his moral convictions, these measures gave modest impetus to movements that eventually ended the economic depression and social instability that had gripped western Europe since the dissolution of the Roman Empire in the 4th and 5th centuries.

Charlemagne’s effort to be an effective ruler was given fresh impetus and direction by a change in the concepts of the purpose of government and of the role of monarchs. That change led to the grafting of a religious component onto the traditional, somewhat narrow conception of the basis of royal authority. Drawing on the Old Testament and the teachings of St. Augustine of Hippo on the nature of the “city of God,” Charlemagne and his advisers progressively saw the king’s position as bestowed by God for the purpose of realizing the divine plan for the universe. Kingship took on a ministerial dimension, which obligated the ruler to assume responsibility for both the spiritual and the material well-being of his subjects. This new role entailed a vast expansion of traditional royal authority and a redefinition of the priorities that government should serve.

Religious reform

Charlemagne’s military conquests, diplomacy, and efforts to impose a unified administration on his kingdom were impressive proof of his ability to play the part of a traditional Frankish king. His religious policy reflected his capacity to respond positively to forces of change working in his world. With considerable enthusiasm he expanded and intensified the reform program rather haltingly instituted in the 740s by his father, Pippin, and his uncle, Carloman. In essence, Charlemagne’s response to the growing urge in his world to deepen spiritual life was to make that objective a prime concern of public policy and royal governance.

His program for meeting his royal religious responsibilities was formulated in a series of synods made up of both clerics and laymen summoned by royal order to consider an agenda set by the royal court. The enactments of the councils were given the force of law in royal capitularies, which all royal officials, but especially bishops, were expected to enforce. That legislation, traditional in spirit and content, was inspired by a conviction that the norms required to correct the deficiencies besetting Christian life in the 8th century had already been defined by Scripture and by earlier church councils and ecclesiastical authorities. The reform focused on a few major concerns: strengthening the church’s hierarchical structure, clarifying the powers and responsibilities of the hierarchy, improving the intellectual and moral quality of the clergy, protecting and expanding ecclesiastical resources, standardizing liturgical practices, intensifying pastoral care aimed at general understanding of the basic tenets of the faith and improvement of morals, and rooting out paganism. As the reform movement progressed, its scope broadened to vest the ruler with authority to discipline clerics, to assert control over ecclesiastical property, to propagate the faith, and to define orthodox doctrine.

Despite extending his authority over matters traditionally administered by the church, Charlemagne’s aggressive moves to direct religious life won acceptance from the ecclesiastical establishment, including the papacy. In assessing clerical support for the king’s religious policy, it is necessary to keep in mind that the king controlled the appointment of bishops and abbots, was a major benefactor of the clerical establishment, and was the guarantor of the Papal States. Nonetheless, the clergy’s support was genuine, reflecting its approval of the king’s desire to strengthen ecclesiastical structures and to deepen the piety and correct the morals of his Christian subjects. That approval was expressed in the glorification of the king in his own day as the rector of the “new Israel.”

Cultural revival

Another notable feature of Charlemagne’s reign was his recognition of the implications for his political and religious programs of the cultural renewal unfolding across much of the Christian West during the 8th century. He and his government patronized a variety of activities that together produced a cultural renovatio (Latin: “renewal” or “restoration”), later called the Carolingian Renaissance. The renewal was given impetus and shape by a circle of educated men—mostly clerics from Italy, Spain, Ireland, and England—to whom Charlemagne gave prominent place in his court in the 780s and 790s; the most influential member of this group was the Anglo-Saxon cleric Alcuin. The interactions among members of the circle, in which the king and a growing number of young Frankish aristocrats often participated, prompted Charlemagne to issue a series of orders defining the objectives of royal cultural policy. Its prime goal was to be the extension and improvement of Latin literacy, an end viewed as essential to enabling administrators and pastors to understand and discharge their responsibilities effectively. Achieving this goal required the expansion of the educational system and the production of books containing the essentials of Christian Latin culture.

The court circle played a key role in producing manuals required to teach Latin, to expound the basic tenets of the faith, and to perform the liturgy correctly. It also helped create a royal library containing works that permitted a deeper exploration of Latin learning and the Christian faith. A royal scriptorium was established, which played an important role in propagating the Carolingian minuscule, a new writing system that made copying and reading easier, and in experimenting with art forms useful in decorating books and in transmitting visually the message contained in them. Members of the court circle composed poetry, historiography, biblical exegesis, theological tracts, and epistles—works that exemplified advanced levels of intellectual activity and linguistic expertise. Their efforts prompted Alcuin to boast that a “new Athens” was in the making in Francia. The new Athens came to be identified with Aachen, from about 794 Charlemagne’s favourite royal residence. Aachen was the centre of a major building program that included the Palatine Chapel, a masterpiece of Carolingian architecture that served as Charlemagne’s imperial church.

Royal directives and the cultural models provided by the court circle were quickly imitated in cultural centres across the kingdom where signs of renewal were already emerging. Bishops and abbots, sometimes with the support of lay magnates, sought to revitalize existing episcopal and monastic schools and to found new ones, and measures were taken to increase the number of students. Some schoolmasters went beyond elementary Latin education to develop curricula and compile textbooks in the traditional seven liberal arts. The number of scriptoria and their productive capacity increased dramatically. And the number and size of libraries expanded, especially in monasteries, where book collections often included Classical texts whose only surviving copies were made for those libraries. Although the full fruits of the Carolingian Renaissance emerged only after Charlemagne’s death, the consequences of his cultural program appeared already during his lifetime in improved competence in Latin, expanded use of written documents in civil and ecclesiastical administration, advanced levels of discourse and stylistic versatility in formal literary productions, enriched liturgical usages, and variegated techniques and motifs employed in architecture and the visual arts.

Emperor of the Romans

Charlemagne’s prodigious range of activities during the first 30 years of his reign were prelude to what some contemporaries and many later observers viewed as the culminating event of his reign: his coronation as Roman emperor. In considerable part, that event was the consequence of an idea shaped by the interpretation given to Charlemagne’s actions as ruler. Over the years, some of the king’s chief political, religious, and cultural advisers became convinced that a new community was taking shape under the aegis of the king and the Frankish people, whom, as one pope avowed, “the Lord God of Israel has blessed.” They spoke of that community as the imperium Christianum, comprising all who adhered to the orthodox faith proclaimed by the Roman church. This community accepted the dominion of a monarch increasingly hailed as the “new David” and the “new Constantine,” the guardian of Christendom and executor of God’s will. Concern for the welfare of the imperium Christianum was heightened by the perceived unfitness of the heretical emperors in Constantinople to claim authority over the Christian community—especially after a woman, Irene, became Eastern emperor in 797. In a larger sense, developments in the 8th century produced the perception in the Carolingian world that the Latin West and the Greek East were diverging in ways that negated the universalist claims of the Eastern emperors.

Then, in 799, an even greater threat to the well being of imperium Christianum emerged. The pope’s capacity to lead God’s people came into question when Pope Leo III was physically attacked by a faction of Romans, including high functionaries in the papal curia, who believed that he was guilty of tyranny and serious personal misconduct. Leo fled to the court of his protector, whose role as rector of Christendom was now dramatically revealed. Charlemagne provided an escort that restored Leo III to the papal office; then, after extensive consultation in Francia, he went to Rome in late 800 to face the delicate issue of judging the vicar of St. Peter and of restoring order in the Papal States. After a series of deliberations with Frankish and Roman clerical and lay notables, it was arranged that, in lieu of being judged, the pope would publicly swear an oath purging himself of the charges against him; some hints in the record suggest that these deliberations also led to a decision to redefine Charlemagne’s position. Two days after Leo’s act of purgation, as Charlemagne attended mass on Christmas Day in the basilica of St. Peter, the pope placed a crown on his head, while the Romans assembled for worship proclaimed him “emperor of the Romans.”

Historians have long debated where responsibility for this dramatic event should be placed. Despite the claim of Einhard, Charlemagne’s court biographer, that the king would not have gone to St. Peter’s on that fateful day had he known what was going to happen, the evidence leaves little doubt that king and pope collaborated in planning the coronation: the restoration of the Roman Empire in the West was advantageous to both. Given the pope’s tenuous position at that moment and the king’s penchant for bold action, it seems highly likely that Charlemagne and his advisers made the key decision involving a new title for the king, leaving it to the pope to arrange the ceremony that would formalize the decision. The new title granted Charlemagne the necessary legal authority to judge and punish those who had conspired against the pope. It also provided suitable recognition of his role as ruler over an empire of diverse peoples and as guardian of orthodox Christendom, and it gave him equal status with his tainted rivals in Constantinople. By once again sanctioning a title for the Carolingians, the pope strengthened his ties with his protector and added lustre to the papal office by virtue of his role in bestowing the imperial crown on the “new Constantine.”

On the assessment of Charlemagne’s years as emperor, historians are not in full accord. Some have seen the period as one of emerging crisis, in which the activities of the aging emperor were increasingly constricted. Because Charlemagne no longer led successful military ventures, the resources with which to reward royal followers declined. At the same time, new external enemies appeared to threaten the realm, especially seagoing Northmen (Vikings) and Saracens. There were also signs of structural inadequacy in the system of government, which constantly took upon itself new responsibilities without a commensurate increase in human or material resources, and growing resistance to royal control by lay and ecclesiastical magnates who began to grasp the political, social, and economic power to be derived from royal grants of land and immunities. Other historians, however, have stressed such things as increased royal concern for the helpless, continued efforts to strengthen royal administration, active diplomacy, the maintenance of religious reform, and support of cultural renewal, all of which they see as evidence of vitality during Charlemagne’s last years.

Within this larger context there were developments that suggest that the imperial title meant little to its recipient. Indeed, in 802, when he first formally used the enigmatic title “Emperor Governing the Roman Empire,” he retained his old title of “King of the Franks and of the Lombards.” He continued to live in the traditional Frankish way, eschewing modes of conduct and protocol associated with imperial dignity. He relied less on the advice of the circle that had shaped the ideology that led to the revival of the Roman Empire. Indeed, the emperor seemed oblivious to the idea of a unified political entity implicit in the imperial title when, in 806, he decreed that on his death his realm would be divided among his three sons.

Other evidence, however, indicates that the imperial title was important to him. Charlemagne engaged in a long military and diplomatic campaign that finally, in 812, gained recognition of his title from the Eastern emperor. After 800 his religious reform program stressed changes in behaviour that implied that membership in the imperium Christianum required new modes of public conduct. He attempted to bring greater uniformity to the diverse legal systems prevailing in his empire. The terminology and the symbols employed by the court to set forth its policies and the artistic motifs employed in the building complex at Aachen reflected an awareness of the imperial office as a source of ideological elements capable of buttressing the ruler’s authority. In 813 Charlemagne assured the perpetuation of the imperial title by bestowing with his own hands the imperial crown on his only surviving son, Louis the Pious. The coronation of 813 suggests that Charlemagne believed that the office had some value and that he wished to exclude the papacy from any part in its bestowal. In its entirety the evidence leads to the conclusion that Charlemagne saw the imperial title as a personal award in recognition of his services to Christendom, to be used as he saw fit to enhance his ability and that of his heirs to direct the imperium Christianum to its divinely ordained end.

Assessment

In January 814 Charlemagne fell ill with a fever after bathing in his beloved warm springs at Aachen; he died one week later. Writing in the 840s, the emperor’s grandson, the historian Nithard, avowed that at the end of his life the great king had “left all Europe filled with every goodness.” Modern historians have made apparent the exaggeration in that statement by calling attention to the inadequacies of Charlemagne’s political apparatus, the limitations of his military forces in the face of new threats from seafaring foes, the failure of his religious reforms to affect the great mass of Christians, the narrow traditionalism and clerical bias of his cultural program, and the oppressive features of his economic and social programs. Such critical attention of Charlemagne’s role, however, cannot efface the fact that his effort to adjust traditional Frankish ideas of leadership and the public good to new currents in society made a crucial difference in European history. His renewal of the Roman Empire in the West provided the ideological foundation for a politically unified Europe, an idea that has inspired Europeans ever since—sometimes with unhappy consequences. His feats as a ruler, both real and imagined, served as a standard to which many generations of European rulers looked for guidance in defining and discharging their royal functions. His religious reforms solidified the organizational structures and the liturgical practices that eventually enfolded most of Europe into a single “Church.” His definition of the role of the secular authority in directing religious life laid the basis for the tension-filled interaction between temporal and spiritual authority that played a crucial role in shaping both political and religious institutions in later western European history. His cultural renaissance provided the basic tools—schools, curricula, textbooks, libraries, and teaching techniques—upon which later cultural revivals would be based. The impetus he gave to the lord-vassal relationship and to the system of agriculture known as manorialism (in which peasants held land from a lord in exchange for dues and service) played a vital role in establishing the seignorial system (in which lords exercised political and economic power over a given territory and its population); the seignorial system in turn had the potential for imposing political and social order and for stimulating economic growth. Such accomplishments certainly justify the superlatives by which he was known in his own time: Carolus Magnus (“Charles the Great”) and Europae pater (“father of Europe”).

Primary sources

In reconstructing Charlemagne’s career, historians must work with a wide range of source materials written during his lifetime or shortly after his death, including annals and chronicles, capitularies, enactments of church councils, charters granting land or privileges, letters, biographies, and poems. The Latin versions of most of this material have been edited and published, especially in a series called the Monumenta Germaniae Historica (MGH). Convenient guides to editions of these sources are provided by the biographies of Charlemagne, cited below. Two of these texts are especially important in providing the basic outlines of Charlemagne’s personality and activities. One is Einhard, Vita Karoli Magni: Life of Charlemagne, Latin text with new English translation, introduction, and notes by Evelyn Scherabon Firchow and Edwin H. Zeydel (1972; reissued 1985). Another translation of Einhard’s biography, to which is joined a lively anecdotal sketch of the king’s activities written about 884 by a monk at St. Gall named Notker the Stammerer, can be found in Einhard and Notker the Stammerer, Two Lives of Charlemagne, translation with introduction by Lewis Thorpe (1969, reissued 2003). The other prime source is translated in Carolingian Chronicles. Royal Frankish Annals and Nithard’s Histories, trans. by Bernhard Walter Scholz with Barbara Rogers (1970; reissued 1972), pp. 2–21, 46–97, a year-by-year account of Charlemagne’s reign, part of a compilation called the Royal Frankish Annals, which was a quasi-official record of royal activity from 741 to 829. English translations of important texts related to Charlemagne’s regime are included in two excellent anthologies: H.R. Loyn and John Percival (compilers), The Reign of Charlemagne: Documents on Carolingian Government and Administration (1975); and P.D. King (ed. and trans.), Charlemagne: Translated Sources (1987).

Biographies and general studies

Robert Folz, “Charlemagne and His Empire,” in Vaclav Mudroch and G.S. Couse (eds.), Essays on the Reconstruction of Medieval History (1974), pp. 86–112; Donald A. Bullough, “Europae Pater: Charlemagne and His Achievement in the Light of Recent Scholarship,” The English Historical Review

,

85:59–105 (1970)

, reports on contemporary scholarship. Heinrich Fichtenau, The Carolingian Empire (1957, reprinted 1991; originally published in German, 1949), is a broad treatment.

; and Richard E. Sullivan, “The Carolingian Age: Reflections on Its Place in the History of the Middle Ages,” Speculum 64:267–306 (1989), are reflections on some of the major issues on which modern scholars concerned with Charlemagne have focused. Donald Bullough, The Age of Charlemagne, 2nd ed. (1980), provides a balanced, engagingly written, profusely illustrated treatment of Charlemagne’s career. Roger Collins, Charlemagne (1998), is more recent, but its highly selective treatment neglects many facets of Charlemagne’s career. A fuller recent treatment in French, stimulating in its interpretations of key events in Charlemagne’s career, is Jean Favier, Charlemagne (1999). Other well-written, balanced accounts are Jacques Boussard, The Civilization of Charlemagne, trans. from the French by Frances Partridge (1968); and Josef Fleckenstein, Karl der Grosse, 3rd ed., rev. (1990).

Many studies of Charlemagne’s reign are organized around major themes, treating in succession such matters as his military ventures, his efforts at governance, his religious reform, his cultural revival, and his coronation as emperor. Such an approach compartmentalizes his accomplishments in a way that makes each sphere of activity considered by itself seem relatively uncomplicated. When his career is treated chronologically in a way that reveals the complexities facing him at any given moment during his reign, his achievements loom much larger. A massive recent study, Dieter Hägermann, Karl der Grosse, new ed. (2003), succeeds remarkably well in this respect. An older study that attempted the same thing is Richard Winston, Charlemagne: From the Hammer to the Cross (1954, reissued 1969), but it is marred by some untenable, even bizarre interpretations of Charlemagne’s actions. Still worth reading is a seminal work that stimulated Carolingian studies during much of the 20th century, Henri Pirenne, Mohammed and Charlemagne, trans. from the French by Bernard Miall (1939; reissued 2001).

Special topics

Basic to any serious study of Charlemagne is Wolfgang Braunfels (ed.), Karl der Grosse: Lebenswerk und Nachleben, 3rd ed., 5 vol. (1967–68), a massive collection of essays treating various aspects of his career and policy, each written by a leading authority. Although not easy to use, a rich storehouse of information on Charlemagne is

an international compendium of 74 contributions by various experts (mostly in German with some articles in French, English, and Italian). Friedrich Heer, Charlemagne and His World (1975), provides a well-illustrated life for the general reader. Robert Folz, Coronation of Charlemagne

provided in the articles in Rosamond McKittrick (ed.), The New Cambridge Medieval History (1995– ); the work also has an extensive, up-to-date bibliography. A good treatment of daily life in the age of Charlemagne is Pierre Riché, Daily Life in the World of Charlemagne, with expanded footnotes, trans. from the French by Jo Ann McNamara (1978; reissued 1988). Siegfried Epperlein, Leben am Hofe Karls des Grossen (2000), provides an engaging description of court life. Charlemagne’s system of government is the subject of two collections of studies by one of the most important Carolingian scholars of recent times: François L. Ganshof, Frankish Institutions under Charles the Great, trans. by Bryce and Mary Lyon (1968); and François L. Ganshof, The Carolingians and the Frankish Monarchy. Studies in Carolingian History, trans. by Janet Sondheimer (1971). Charlemagne’s role in religious life is clearly described in Émile Amann, L’Époque carolingienne: Histoire de l’Église depuis les origines jusqu’à nos jours, vol. 6, ed. by Augustin Fliche and Victor Martin (1947), pp. 49–200. Although written from a papal perspective, Thomas F.X. Noble, The Republic of St. Peter: The Birth of the Papal State, 680–825 (1984), is invaluable in understanding Charlemagne’s relationship with the papacy. Economic and social conditions during Charlemagne’s reign are treated in Renée Doehaerd, The Early Middle Ages in the West: Economy and Society, trans. by W.G. Deakin (1978, originally published in French, 2nd ed., 1971). Provocative remarks on the nature of the Carolingian Renasissance are given by John J. Contreni, “The Carolingian Renaissance,” in John J. Contreni, Carolingian Learning, Masters, and Manuscripts (1992), chapter 3; and Janet L. Nelson, “On the Limits of the Carolingian Renaissance,” in Janet L. Nelson, Politics and Ritual in Early Medieval Europe (1996), pp. 49–67. Still the best study on the Carolingian Renaissance is Erna Patzelt, Die karolingische Renaissance (1965). A provocative treatment of the imperial coronation of 800 is Robert Folz, The Coronation of Charlemagne, 25 December 800, trans. by J.E. Anderson(1974; originally published in French, 1964)

, contains a history of his antecedents and a study of his influence on both contemporaries and successors. Susan E. Farrier, The Medieval Charlemagne Legend: An Annotated Bibliography (1993), lists more than 2,700 titles concerning Charlemagne and his era, as well as the legend

. Rich in insights into the import of the imperial title in the Carolingian world is Louis Halphen, Charlemagne and the Carolingian Empire, trans. by Giselle de Nie (1977; originally published in French, 1947, reprinted with updated bibliography, 1995).